


If I Said I'm Upbeat

by cherishiskisa



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: (well it's a mention), M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Unrequited Love, also mentioned sex but nothing explicit, and then fizzles, because this is that, lmao i dont know why i like making bahorel sad sorry, whats it called when a relationship is really great and moving rlly fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1468990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherishiskisa/pseuds/cherishiskisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bahorel meets a blue-eyed shit-talking boy at a cage fight and falls in love so quickly that it makes his head spin. Apparently, he's not great at showing it, though, and it's not like he ever actually tells Grantaire that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Said I'm Upbeat

**Author's Note:**

> hi friends it's me back again with something that isn't swak lmao
> 
> anyway here's a thing with my current fave ship and im sorry but i love it when bahorel loves him and grantaire doesn't love him back i don't know why i like hurting bahorel but i do i dooooooo
> 
> this is based off the backstory of an rp that i have with tumblr user sammysjerk jsyk s/o to jill for encouraging me to write this god damn thing
> 
> title is from "make you happy" by mika which is my #1 unrequited b/R song go give it a listen and pls leave a review somewhere to tell me what you thought!!!!!

Bahorel meets him in a cage fight.

He’s just finished cleaning himself up, he says. Just finished some rehab-type self-cleanse thing, and now he’s ready to start a new life. “Maybe go to art school?” he says as he throws a flawless hook at the side of Bahorel’s head. “Or maybe just keep on doing nothing."

Bahorel dodges and pins him to the ground by the hips. “Come home with me,” he says, and the blue-eyed boy beneath him swallows infinitesimally and nods.

“I’m Grantaire,” he says.

They leave bruises on each other that last for weeks. It turns out they take their coffee the exact same way, and Bahorel sees a cosmic significance in this. He doesn’t voice it to Grantaire, though, and thinks instead of the void and how nothing, really, has any cosmic significance at all. 

Bahorel and Grantaire go on an actual date later that week; they go to some shitty restaurant close enough to Bahorel’s apartment that if a rushed handjob in the bathroom ends up not being satisfactory they can quickly pay the tab and hurry back into bed. They’ve been spending most of their time in bed, to be fair. In bed, on the floor, on the kitchen counter. Sometimes on the couch. Sometimes they play videogames. Loser gets to have sex with the winner, so, really, nobody loses. And sometimes they high-five after sex. It’s pretty cool. 

After waking up next to Grantaire for the fifth day in a row, Bahorel thinks he might be in love. And it’s kind of scary, actually. He’s never really felt like this before. But when he thinks about Grantaire he gets _giddy_ like a goddamn enamored schoolgirl, and he’s never been much of a cuddler before but he sure wishes Grantaire was so they could lay in bed and alternate between snuggling and fucking all day. He easily envisions spending a lot of time with this kid in the future near and far. He’s never met anyone like Grantaire—let alone been with anyone like Grantaire. He’s never had someone as a friend and a lover simultaneously; someone he could play a few rounds of Halo with and then fuck into the mattress. Being around Grantaire is so easy, and it all feels so right. Bahorel gets the sense that he’s swallowed a small star system, because every time he looks at Grantaire he thinks he might be glowing from the inside out. “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” Bahorel thinks to himself as he stares at a sleeping Grantaire some lazy Sunday morning, and proceeds to laugh so hard that Grantaire wakes up.

They drink together, they smoke together, they do damn near everything together. One time, Bahorel is staring at him and just a little bit high so his verbal filter isn’t working right. “Hey, man, you actually have really pretty eyes,” he says. 

Grantaire looks over to him and hands the joint back. “Oh?”

“Yeah. They remind me of my favourite pair of jeans.”

Grantaire laughs through a puff of smoke. “Wow, you’re a real romantic.” 

“Fuck you,” Bahorel grins, and they leave it at that.

Two weeks pass, then three. Grantaire starts casually leaving his stuff at Bahorel’s place, but Bahorel can’t figure out whether he’s _leaving his stuff at Bahorel’s place_ or just extremely absentminded. Probably both. Bahorel loves the dynamic they have—their casual bantering, their easy shit-talking when they play whatever fuckin’ video game Bahorel has dug out of the back of his closet this time, the way their hips slot together _just so_. He’s never said any of this to Grantaire, though. He doesn’t want to seem too sappy, too clingy, too stereotypically gay.

But every time he ties Grantaire to the bed as Grantaire whines and pants, he hopes that it’ll keep him there for a little while longer.

He thinks he might have to start telling his friends. “Hey,” he imagines himself saying, “I’m seeing someone.” Or maybe, “Hey, guess what? I have a boyfriend.” Is he Grantaire’s boyfriend? He’s a little afraid to ask. At any rate, he smiles slightly every time he runs through a possible scenario in which he tells his friends about the beautiful creature he’s been sharing his bed with for the past month or so.

And then one morning, when Bahorel had slept in and Grantaire hadn’t, Grantaire is cooking breakfast and Bahorel stumbles in and leans his elbows back on the counter.

“What’s cookin’, good-lookin’?” he asks with a smirk, snagging Grantaire’s mug of coffee from by his side, and Grantaire looks at him over his shoulder and laughs.

“Eggs. Hey, I’ve been thinking.”

Bahorel blinks a little and takes a sip of Grantaire’s coffee, tasting toothpaste on the rim of the mug. This makes something pleasant curl through the pit of his stomach—he’ll never admit it, but he loves the domesticity. “Uh, okay. ‘Bout what?”

Grantaire pokes at the lumpy omelet for a few minutes before removing it from heat and turning to look at Bahorel. “I bet you’ve been thinking this, too, actually. I dunno, it just seems like we’d be better as friends? We’re practically just mates that fuck anyway, right? So, uh, yeah.”

Bahorel practically inhales coffee and tries not to choke. “What?”

Grantaire worries at his lower lip slightly with his teeth. “I think we’d be better as just friends,” he repeats. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Bahorel says, but it’s not even him talking, it’s some weird robot creature that’s taken over his body, because Bahorel doesn’t have any control over the words coming out of his mouth right now. “Yeah, no, I’ve been thinking the same thing, too.”

That’s a filthy goddamn lie, but it makes Grantaire smile as he turns back to the frying pan. “Cool. Get me some plates, wouldja?”

The weird robot creature currently inhabiting Bahorel’s body and brain that’s keeping him from howling in physical pain right now does as it is told, numbly going over and retrieving plates for Grantaire.

They banter calmly through breakfast, and it almost seems like nothing has changed and Bahorel half-convinces himself that he’s just hallucinated the things Grantaire said just a few minutes ago until Grantaire gets up to go throw on some clothes, alone.

Bahorel sits at the breakfast table and tries not to have a panic attack.

After Grantaire dresses and leaves with a sunny smile for Bahorel and a “thanks for understanding, man, I’m really glad we’re on the same page”, Bahorel collapses on the couch and doesn’t move for twelve hours straight.

He can’t sleep that night and doesn’t even try, really.

The next morning, Bahorel practically runs to answer the door, hoping that it’s Grantaire coming to say that he was completely wrong and they can’t be just friends and that what they had was so, so good and it can’t change, it just can’t. It is Grantaire, but he’s just grinning and inviting Bahorel to the gym.

Bahorel says “sure, gimme a sec” and hyperventilates in his room for a couple of minutes before numbly getting dressed and heading out to go to the gym with Grantaire as though nothing has happened at all.

He doesn’t know how this is going to work. He doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to get over Grantaire when he’s going to see him and keep on being his best friend every day. (“What did I do wrong?” he thinks, every lonely night. “How could he not see that I loved him?”) Hell, he doesn’t even know if he _can_ get over Grantaire.

But he does know that he really has no other choice but to try.


End file.
